Another week of short stories for those of you who have been brainwashed by technology and can’t pay attention for more than a few minutes. You’re welcome by the way. First of all I would like to start off by saying I had friends in town this week from London and therefore ended up going out way too much. You know how it is when you have company, every night of the week is game for going out, you spend way too much money but you have a good-ass fucking time and subsequently, at least for me, lots of stories.
So here we go. I’m at a nice cocktail bar in the west village enjoying a delicious cocktail with a party of three friends and we are having a great time. We are sitting at a table in the back of the bar and next to us there’s a table in the corner where two guys and one girl are sitting. The girl is sitting in the middle and to the outside observer it would appear that both men are simultaneously trying to make something happen with her (always fun for the girl, not at all). I don’t pay much mind as I’ve already been drinking prosecco for about 4.5 hours at this point and am having a fabulous time with my friends. That is, until I see something in the corner of my eye on the edge of our table. I look over and see that it’s a napkin with “Hi, how are you?” written on it. Oh good, we’re back in grade school, writing notes to each other, ‘cause who doesn’t want to relive those good ‘ole days (oh I forgot, just about everyone)? This goes back and forth for awhile, mostly because it was so ridiculous that I decided to humor the guy for a little while. However, after only a bit of note passing, I got bored and switched to writing in French which stumped him a bit, after which point we paid our tab and departed. And that was the end of the note passing, a good taste of youth.
Let’s fast forward a few nights. Setting: a quiet bar in Bushwick where going out for “a glass of wine or two” turned into a bottle or two with us closing the bar, obviously. There were three of us to start, all girls sitting at the bar together chatting and bantering with the bartender. Shortly after we got there a guy and girl walked in and ordered a drink. I assumed they were together which soon turned out to be very false. Literally minutes after they came inside (I could be exaggerating slightly but I swear to god it was no longer than five minutes after coming in) the guy looked prolong-edly in my direction. I didn’t pay it much attention initially, however throughout the evening I would catch him staring at me. These weren’t the quick little flirty looks that are generally accepted, this was blatant, impolite staring and it got worse and worse. In the beginning it started out only being a few moments at a time but that amount of time continued getting longer and longer and longer. Really uncomfortably so. A bit later we had a few more friends join us and we moved to a table. He continued staring so much that even my friends started to notice and get creeped out. At one point I got up to from our table to use the ladies room and had to walk past him and he stared at me THE WHOLE TIME. Shortly after that he and his friends were getting up to leave and he kept shooting meaningful glances at me as if hoping I would come over and stop him (fat chance of that, creeper, I was counting down the seconds until he was out that door) but finally he had no choice but to follow his friends out, giving me one last creeper stare. Never even said a word to me. Not that I in any way wanted that, but I feel like one awkward conversation would have been better than a whole evening of creepy stares.
After creepy stare left, my girlfriend and I went to the bar to order a drink. The bar was pretty empty at this point except for our party, but there was one guy sitting by himself at the bar. He was well dressed (although it was more like well dressed in cheap clothes rather than actually well dressed), all in black, slacks, button up, tie and blazer. The whole she-bang and he looked extremely out of place in the quiet neighborhood bar in Bushwick. I told him he looked very spiffy and asked why he was so dressed up (just making small talk while waiting for more wine). He told me he’d been at an important meeting for work and after I asked how the meeting went he introduced himself to my friend and me. Then our umpteenth glass of wine arrived and our new “friend” announced to the bartender “I’ll pay for these”. Great, no qualms on my end. We chatted for another minute and then went to rejoin our group. A little while later however, he came over and basically invited himself to sit with us (only slightly rude). This wouldn’t have been as bad except that he also had terrible social skills. He was the kind of loud person who loves to talk but doesn’t really understand the concept of not talking over people or interrupting (so basically, the worst). To make things even better, eventually he began subtly (not) rubbing his knee against mine. EW. I was definitely not giving off those kinds of signals (I’m not even sure what kind of signals you have to give off for someone to creepily start rubbing knees with you), it seemed to me I was mostly presenting the opposite signals, really. Like, please-get-the-fuck-away-from-me signals. But to no avail. Luckily one of my Londoner friends suggested we sing the Barley Mow, a fabulous old English drinking song (which if you’ve never experienced it, make it your mission to find someone British who knows it and will sing it with you, you won’t regret it [until the next morning, that it]), and we moved out of our corner table to a more appropriate table for our drinking song needs. During this time the seating arrangements changed and I managed to stay as far away from Mr. Spiffy as possible. Shortly after we finished our rowdy drinking song we were offered complimentary house shots from the bartender (who was more than likely just trying to get us the fuck out of the bar) and we stumbled home parting ways with Mr. Spiffy.
Anyway, that brings this week’s adventures to a close. I sincerely hope that you’ve had a good laugh or two and all I can say is, come and visit NYC. There’s always a good fucking time to be had (and always a creep or two).
This weeks theme song, The Barley Mow! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqrNsAfyu4M
25shotsandcounting 